


my scars bleed golden

by charleybradburies



Series: it's our resistance // you can't resist us [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apologies, Arguing, Assassins & Hitmen, Canon Era, Character Development, Childhood Trauma, Conversations, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Missing Scene, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Arya Stark, Parallels, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Relationship(s), Past Sexual Abuse, Past Violence, Protective Siblings, Psychological Trauma, Relationship Discussions, Sad and Happy, Season/Series 07, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Sister-Sister Relationship, Trauma, Wine, Women Being Awesome, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 18:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: Sansa challenges Arya about her capacity to wound. They share some stories, and Bran shares some...interesting information.Mentions of trauma. No trauma depicted as happening in this work.[title from the score's "legend".]





	my scars bleed golden

Arya’s later to the lord’s chamber than usual. She already knew she’d pushed too far earlier, and she’s not keen to see the aftermath, but she knows she must - if they’re going to destroy the people who want to hurt them, if they’re ever going to stop living in their hurts, if they’re going to survive the winter.

She opens the door and closes it before looking, and sees that Sansa’s curled up in bed with Ghost around her and a cup of wine in her hand. Her face is visibly red, but she’s not currently crying.

_Fuck._

“I’ve been getting carried away. I’m sorry.”

“You really are so damn _angry,_ aren’t you?” Sansa’s voice bites into her, and the guilt is even more painful. 

She _really_ hates having to deal with feeling things.

“How could I _not_ be? With...everything?” 

“I don’t know, Arya, but for gods’ sakes, if you have to do it, find someone _else_ to fucking hurt.”

She’d anticipated Sansa’s cursing far less than the anger, and it catches her embarrassingly off guard. 

“You know, Ramsay liked to pretend to play games, too. Liked blades, liked threatening, liked knowing he’d ruined me for the rest of my life.”

“You’re not _ruined_ ,” Arya yelps. “And he’s dead. Don’t let him keep getting to you like that.”

She _really_ hasn’t thought that remark through, but once she’s said it, she’s acutely aware that she can’t take it back, so she lets it hang in the cool air for the few seconds it takes Sansa to lash back out at her.

“ _Let_ him? You think I simply just _let_ him do everything he did? You don’t understand, Arya. Ever since we were little girls, you haven’t understood what it’s like to _need_ to bend to other people’s wills in order to survive. Like the only sensible thing you said today, the world doesn’t just let girls decide what they’re going to be. Sometimes we don’t _have_ a choice.”

“Sometimes we do,” Arya poses weakly, but even before she speaks her mind’s eye sees another story: it watches Yoren chopping off her hair, watches her begrudgingly travel with the Hound, watches her present the coin Jaqen gave her to the captain who took her to Braavos, watches her toss Arya Stark’s clothes into the water - watches her, frightened and blind and fighting the waif. What choice did she feel she had? Sansa had obviously felt just cornered as she had, and she’d nearly always worn her own name. 

“Yes, sometimes we do,” Sansa replies - sadly, but easily enough. “But not all the time. When the choice is between pain or death, between lying or treason, the _choice_ might be an illusion. Not all of the choices I’ve made have been good, but I’ve survived them, and I live with that. I have lived with that every single day since the world that we know went to shit, Arya.”

Sansa finishes off her wine. Arya doesn’t dare to speak this time.

“I’m not _like_ you. You already know that. You _know_ that I’ve spent years living with people who’ve betrayed us, without the nerve or the weapons to kill them, and you...went off and learned how to do that. You can kill your enemies, and you _have_ killed many of them, and that’s not something I’m capable of.”

“Yes, you are. You _have_. Jon would have killed Ramsay with his own hands, but he was yours to kill, and you did.”

“The _hounds_ finished that. I didn’t even tie him up myself,” Sansa argues, strangely resigned to some inaccurate idea of inaction. Arya sighs at that. She hadn’t slit the throats of every one of Walder Frey’s sons, but she’d killed them just the same.

However much Sansa had changed, she could still be so damn difficult when she wished to be; Sansa’s countenance, though, says she’s honestly doubting herself, that she’s being vulnerable not to provoke Arya, but because Arya’s picked open wounds that have yet to heal and she’s drunk enough not to be afraid of how easily an Arya who didn’t wish to apologize could destroy her. 

Arya’s almost jealous.

“They finished it, sure. You started it. There’s a certain amount of cruelty required to kill with your own hands, and...however cruel I thought you were when we were girls, you have _somehow_ lost all of that.”

“...along with so much else.”

“Not everything. Not yourself. Not Winterfell. Not the North. You fought for that.”

“I didn’t _fight_ -”

“Oh, so earlier you were telling me I should thank you because the army you brought won the battle, and now you say you _didn’t_ fight?”

Sansa sighs in annoyance, but Arya’s honestly frustrated that they’re stuck on the semantics of the word ‘fight’.

“Yes. And now, we’re trying to rid ourselves of the man that helped me make that happen.”

“Like you said earlier, _you_ made that happen. You don’t _owe_ him anything.”

“He brought his army-”

“He brought our _cousin’s_ army, after killing our cousin’s _mother_ , and helped you to defeat the man he sold you to. Defeating the Boltons doesn’t take away what Ramsay did, and you don’t owe Baelish anything for helping you take back the home that _they_ took from us.”

Sansa looks up and studies her face, like she’s looking for a lie. They both can play the lying game, and Arya, for once, truly isn’t lying. It’s easy enough to lie, of course, but in this room that now belongs to her sister - where their father and mother once slept, tangled happily in each other’s arms - Arya’s not still so heartless. 

_No,_ she corrects herself. She never was, but for how dearly she’d tried.

After a moment of consideration, Sansa tries to smile - still hurting from Arya’s earlier vitriol, but seemingly having thought of something amusing. 

“I wonder if Petyr believed your comment about my dresses.”

“What?”

“If you wanted to wear one, you’d only need ask, you know. Especially the one with the wolf on the chest. You’d look lovely in it.”

“I don’t want your stupid dresses,” Arya says, but surprises even herself with the complete lack of anger behind the comment. 

“Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re not _going_ to wear my face. You’d have to wear them forever, you know.”

Arya rolls her eyes.

“I didn’t really think that through. Far less than my idea of killing Daenerys Targaryen.”

“I would hope so,” Sansa says, with half a chuckle, and Arya’s heart feels unspeakably lighter knowing that she hasn’t ultimately broken her sister. Her time back at Winterfell had practically convinced her that breaking Sansa wasn’t possible, and something between jealousy and sisterly pride had spurred on the game - the game Arya wasn’t quite sure how _not_ to play anymore. 

Being home was going to be more difficult than she’d hoped - but then again, wasn’t everything? 

“Well, like I told Father a long time ago, I don’t actually _hate_ you. Pretty dresses and dead husbands and horrible allies or not.”

Arya hasn’t seen Sansa actually cry while she’s been standing here, but Sansa wipes at her eyes before deciding to put down her empty cup of wine. She looks to have decided she’s done with shielding herself tonight. 

“The threat was sufficiently terrifying, though. Please do try not to talk like that.”

“I - I’m sorry. It was - I’ve learned to enjoy making people believe me, and I didn’t really think that you might take it quite so seriously.”

“Yes, well, hearing you talk about faces is one thing. Seeing them, holding them, was...something else entirely.” 

Arya chuckles, and Sansa gives her their mother’s cross look. 

“When I was first training, all I was allowed to help with was washing the bodies. You should have seen me when they finally showed me what we did with them. I’d seen Jaqen change faces before, but I didn’t really know anything about it.”

“The man who trained you,” Sansa recalls, and Arya nods.

“And the man who helped my friends and I escape Harrenhal. It’s why I decided to find him after leaving the Hound.”

“Friends?” Sansa exclaims, at Arya’s expense, and a moment later clarifies her surprise. “You haven’t spoken of anyone you travelled with, other than the Hound. You mentioned a Brotherhood, momentarily, but you’ve said nothing more. Were they friends you’d made in King’s Landing?”

Arya hesitates, but Sansa sits straight up in bed, putting a hand in the spot where Ghost isn’t to indicate she’s making room, and it’s so childlike that Arya almost giggles as she walks forward and sits down at the end of the bed.

“One of them, yes. The other, actually, was being mean to me, when we all met, but we got along later, especially after...after Yoren died - the Night’s Watch recruiter, who was protecting us.”

It takes her strangely little time to begin to divulge nearly everything she can remember, and she tries not to think too hard about how well Sansa takes her story.

“And where is he now? This Gendry?” 

Sansa’s voice is teasing, but the truth of the matter is that Arya hasn’t thought, really _thought_ about him in so long, that the tears reach her cheeks before she knows they’re coming. Sansa’s hugging her before she can even wipe them away, and it takes a moment of uncertainty to realize that Sansa feels the need to comfort her, even without knowing all that Arya might have lost. 

She returns the hug and lets herself bury her face in Sansa’s shoulder, an intimate sort of embrace she might have had with their mother but wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing with her sister. 

“He’s dead, too, isn’t he?”

Sansa’s voice is quiet and sad.

“As far as I know. They - the Brotherhood - they sold him to a witch. I don’t know what happened after that. I added them to my list, though. Beric Dondarrion, and Thoros of Myr, and the Red Woman.”

“The Red Woman Lady Melisandre?”

Arya pulls back, and now wipes her tears. 

“You _know_ her?”

“She served Stannis Baratheon, and...she brought Jon back.”

“Fuck,” Arya sighs.

“She also burned Shireen Baratheon alive, though - which Jon banished her from the North for doing - so that’s not to say forgiveness is necessary. Besides, she would say that it was Ser Davos and the Lord of Light who did most of the work.”

“Ser Davos? _That’s_ not a priest’s name,” Arya remarks lightly.

“No, no. He served Stannis as his hand, and he serves Jon now. He left with him for Dragonstone. According to Edd Tollett, who’s Lord Commander now - quite a nice man, one of the ones who stood with Jon after...after the mutiny...Davos is the one who convinced Melisandre to try to bring him back. He’s not a Northman, but he’s fiercely loyal and always honest.” 

Arya smiles. 

“Good. We certainly need some people like that, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Sansa agrees softly. “Yes, we do.”

She glances over at Ghost, and a sadness creeps into her eyes.

“You’re worried about Brienne and Podrick being gone,” Arya notes.

“Brienne can handle herself.” Sansa sounds more like she’s trying to reassure herself than to convince Arya of anything - because, of course, that’s not the point. Arya makes a point to herself not to sigh at her sister’s attempt at redirecting the conversation.

“I didn’t _mean_ about them. You learned that _he_ would use Brienne against you, try to appeal to her better judgment in order to push us farther apart, and you knew better than to let him. That doesn’t, and _shouldn’t,_ make it easy for you to be without her, but like you’ve said, Ser Jaime’s treated them both with surprising decency.”

Sansa snorts, clearly amused even with the immediate reprimand she gives. 

“We need to work on your diplomacy. You can’t _say_ things like that to people.”

“I can say them just fine. There’s nothing wrong with my fucking diplomacy.”

Sansa puts a hand up to her head, leaning into it with a sigh. Arya decides to give her a moment to be dramatic before making another remark, but they’re both startled by a knock on the door. Arya’s more surprised that she didn’t anticipate the knock than that it happened, but Sansa nods, so she lays a hand on Needle and stands up to answer the door, only to find Bran. 

She steps out of the way so he can wheel himself in. His face, as usual, is practically unreadable, and Sansa’s quickly struck with concern. 

“Bran, is something the matter?” she asks.

“Not particularly, but I just had a rather strange dream and I wanted to share it before I forgot it. I hope I wasn’t interrupting your nightly discussions.”

“Oh?” Sansa inquires, clearly deciding not to pry into why he knows they have nightly discussions.

“Yes. Quite strange. Would you like to hear, Arya?”

Arya furrows her brow, but a moment later realizes the dream must have been of her. 

“Yes,” she states, and moves around him to sit back down on the bed. Ghost moves his head atop Sansa’s shoulder, as though he completely realizes that Bran’s about to tell them something.

“Past or future?” Arya asks, hoping he hasn’t seen something she’d rather he or Sansa not know about. Bran’s expression changes to something much closer to a grin.

“I saw you with your children.”

Arya's barely even registered the words before she turns towards her sister's enthusiastic gasp and is immediately confronted with joyous tears and a massive smile. Sansa's sheer happiness almost warms her to the concept. 

_Almost._

She turns back to Bran, whose smile looks like more a smirk now.

"How could you know they were _mine_?"

"A little girl with grey eyes and a training sword called you Mother. I'm fairly certain."


End file.
